Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain facts for kids
The Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain was a big science trip that explored the plants and animals of New Spain (which is now mostly Mexico) between 1787 and 1803. Its main goals were to study nature and create a special garden for plants. King Charles III of Spain paid for this expedition. A doctor named Martín Sessé y Lacasta led the team, which included other plant experts like José Mariano Mociño. This trip was part of a larger plan by the Spanish king to make his empire stronger and richer, called the Bourbon Reforms. Many new plant and animal species were found, and the team brought back many beautiful drawings of them. This expedition showed that Spain was still a powerful country and was interested in new scientific ideas.
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Why the Expedition Happened
Martín Sessé was a Spanish doctor who worked at the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. He was already living in Mexico and thought of the idea for this expedition. He wrote to another Spanish plant expert, Casimiro Gómez Ortega, suggesting the trip. Sessé believed the expedition could do two important things:
- First, it could help classify all the natural resources in New Spain.
- Second, it could help bring new health practices to the Spanish colonies.
Around the same time, a mapmaker named Juan Bautista Muñoz found old papers from an earlier plant expedition. This was the Francisco Hernández Expedition from 1570–1577. King Charles III was told about these old papers. This made him even more interested in supporting a new expedition. So, on March 20, 1787, the king officially approved the trip and gave the money needed for it.
Getting Ready for the Journey
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Getting ready for the expedition started in 1787. Martín Sessé first traveled to places like Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. He wanted to learn from earlier science trips that had happened there. He also helped with some studies, like research on a parasitic illness in Cuba.
When Sessé came back to Mexico, a team of Spanish scientists joined him. These experts were chosen by the director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. The team included:
- Vicente Cervantes, a plant professor in New Spain.
- José Longinos Martínez from the Museum of Natural History.
- Juan Diego del Castillo, a pharmacist and plant expert.
- José Maldonado and José Mariano Mociño, both plant experts.
The expedition also had artists to draw the plants and animals. Two young Mexican artists were Juan de Dios Vicente de la Cerda and Atanasio Echeverría. A type of plant, Echeveria, was later named after Atanasio. There was also a third artist, Pedro Oliver.
Starting the Royal Botanical Garden
The expedition had several big goals. One main goal was to create a large garden in Mexico City. This garden was meant to grow and study plants from New Spain that could be useful to Spain. Another goal was to start a school to train doctors and pharmacists. A third goal was to study and share information about New Spain's rich plant life. Even though local people knew a lot about plants and their uses, the expedition mostly used the classification system created by Carolus Linnæus.
Exploring Beyond the Capital
In the first year, the team made short trips around the countryside. They also helped create Mexico's Botanical Garden, which opened on March 27, 1788. In May of that year, the team began exploring areas like Cuernavaca, Tixtla, Chilpanzingo, and Acapulco.
In 1790, the team explored large parts of New Spain. They traveled through Michoacán, Sonora, and Apatzingan. When they reached Guadalajara, the group split into two. Mociño, del Castillo, and Echeverría went towards Aguas Calientes, passing through Álamos and Tarahumara. Sessé took a different route to the same place, crossing Sinaloa.
When they met up again in Aguas Calientes in 1792, they received new orders from the king. They were told to travel to Nootka Island. This island was being argued over by Spain and Great Britain at the time. All the explorers headed to the northwest coast, except for Juan del Castillo. Sadly, he died of scurvy in 1793, soon after finishing his book about plants from Acapulco.
After returning from Nootka, the expedition members focused on the southern areas. They split into two teams again. One team, led by Mociño, explored Mixteca and the Tabasco coast. The other team, led by Sessé, went to Jalapa and Guaztuco. The two groups met in Córdoba, then continued to Veracruz, and returned to Mexico City through Tehuantepec and Tabasco.
In March 1794, Sessé was allowed to extend the expedition. He wanted to explore Central America more, especially Guatemala, Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico. The expedition split into two teams once more. Sessé and Echeverría went to Cuba, while Mociño, de la Cerda, and others went to Guatemala.
Finally, Sessé was ordered to finish their studies and return to Spain. It took another two years to gather and organize all the materials they had collected. The team brought back about 3,500 different plant species. This included 200 new groups of plants and over 1,000 species that were completely new to science. They also created thousands of drawings and watercolors, mostly of plants. Many of these were done by Echeverría and de la Cerda. The members of the expedition returned to Spain at different times during 1803.
What Happened Next
Both Sessé and Mociño were honored for their hard work. They were promoted to the Royal Academy of Medicine in Madrid in 1805.
After returning to Spain, Sessé and Mociño published some medical writings. For example, Sessé wrote about how to get rid of yellow fever, which was common in southern Spain in 1804. Sessé stressed how important clean surroundings and good hygiene were, which people had not paid much attention to before.
Sessé died on October 4, 1808. After his death, Mociño tried to keep interest in the expedition's work alive. He was one of the most active plant experts on the trip. However, because he supported Napoleon, Mociño had to leave Spain in 1812. He found safety in Montpellier, France. He gave some of the expedition's papers and drawings to a Swiss plant expert named Augustin de Candolle. De Candolle had about 1,200 of the drawings copied by artists in Geneva in early 1817. He then gave the original drawings back to Mociño.
In that same year, Mociño was finally able to return to Spain. But his health was not good, and he died on May 19, 1820. After Mociño died, the collection of expedition drawings passed through many hands. Eventually, Carnegie-Mellon University bought the collection in 1981 from a family in Catalonia. For about 150 years, no one knew where the original drawings were. So, many books about the expedition had to use the copies made in Geneva.
After Sessé and Mociño passed away, other plant experts like Gómez Ortega, de Candolle, and Mariano Lagasca published new species based on their plants and drawings. But because of many political problems in Spain, most of the expedition's work was not published until the 1880s. This was almost a century after the expedition began! Some of the expedition's papers were published in Mexico between 1887 and 1894. One book, Plantae Novae Hispaniae, focused on plants from Mexico. Another book, Flora Mexicana, included a mix of species from all the places the expedition visited in the New World. By the time these books came out, much of the expedition's work had been replaced by newer findings. A huge book called Nova Genera et Species by the German plant expert Carl Sigismund Kunth started appearing in 1815.
Many of the collected plants, seeds, and some duplicate drawings ended up at the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. Today, they are kept there with plants from other Spanish science trips. The copies made under de Candolle's supervision are still in Geneva. Copies of these Geneva drawings have been made over time and are now in collections all over the world.
In 1981, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie-Mellon University bought many of the original plant drawings from these expeditions. These drawings came from the nephews of a historian named Lorenzo Torner Casas. This collection is now called the Torner Collection of Sessé and Mociño Biological Illustrations. It has about 2,000 drawings by Echeverría, de la Cerda, and Oliver. About 1,800 of these are of plants, while the rest show mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects.
See also
In Spanish: Real Expedición Botánica a Nueva España para niños
